Young Lightning
by Flagpoles
Summary: So you didn't hear this from me, but Lily Evans and James Potter are writing songs together in the middle of the night. or: THE ROCK BAND AU


_Because I can't love you like this anymore,_ _I am drowning_ _and you like watching me do so._ (Written by Marlene McKinnon, with eyeliner on the bathroom wall)

***

Two of the biggest bands in music history have been tasked with making a collaboration album in three months and the world is losing its shit.

First, let me set the scene. Lily Evans is sitting in her bra and fiddling with a broken knob from the sound system on the couch, next to Mary MacDonald (also shirtless) who is painting her nails black and leaning against Evans for support. Marlene McKinnon (who never has a shirt on, I'm told) is sighing and blatantly ignoring the 'no smoking' sign as she blows grey swirling smoke into Potter's face. James Potter, evidently used to this, is watching Remus Lupin and Sirius Black playing chess on the floor with interest. Black is losing horrifically, though his expression is one of someone who is not bothered in the slightest. Instead he grabs McKinnon's cigarette, knocks his king over and squeezes himself on the couch in between Potter and McKinnon. Lupin is left on the floor and leans against Potter's legs as McKinnon scowls and snatches her cigarette back from Black, swearing at him under her breath.

It's hard to imagine a time when they weren't all together in this very studio, on this pitifully hot day on this horrendously ugly couch but, of course, it wasn't always like this.

***

The Marauders started as four teenagers, two guitars and a boarding school that left the band rooms unlocked at night.

James Potter has been playing music since he was seven and hearing it since before he could walk. His parents produced music for the The Whomping Willows, Three Broomsticks and Bertie Bott before retiring in their early fifties to have Potter himself.

"I met Bathila Bagshot once," he states proudly when I bring up his musical background, referring to the rock princess of years gone by who sang the number one hits of the forties, 'The History of Magic is with You and Me' and 'I am a Fucking Snake'.

Potter says he just knew he wanted to be a rock singer when he was eleven. "Precisely the age he met me," cuts in Black, "he knew when he saw me, that our music would be legendary." Black is then promptly shoved off the crowded couch by McKinnon for interrupting. I have noticed after being here only minutes that McKinnon takes no bullshit. Black, unfortunately, is full of bullshit, and so steals her cigarette as payback.

However, Black does have a point. Because at twelve, you couldn't find better friends than in James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew. You also couldn't find people so incredibly different and yet so alike. Potter, with the famous tussled hair and wide smirk, his singing voice has often been compared to what it sounds like when God talks ("Don't put that in," hurriedly cuts in Evans,"Potter can't talk up his own voice, that's cheating!"). He is exactly what you think a rock singer should be. Confident, with a lean, lazy cat smile and perfect hipbones fitted in black skinny jeans.

On the other hand, guitar player Sirius Black is a different matter altogether. Raised in an ancient English household by strictly anti-rock parents — it's a wonder he turned out like he did, but _God,_ is everyone glad. Black really is the definition of cool; an aura of easy confidence leaks out of his very blood whenever he plays his guitar. His hair once started a riot in the middle of a show in Dublin and entire corners of the Internet are dedicated to the way he sits down, a sort of flopping onto the chair in the easiest way possible. "[My] Parents are fuckin' arseholes," says Black, something close to a shadow briefly crossing his face. "Mum was a right piece of work and never liked the whole music thing. Same with my Dad. Prong's parents, however," — here he grins and suddenly, I can see why he was voted 'Sexiest Man Alive' by People magazine — "loved the music. I moved in with them when I was sixteen." And he's right. Black had moved out of his supposedly abusive home by sixteen and was in with Potter, who loudly claims that Black was "The worst roommate ever, 'cause he never cleaned. But he knew how to get good booze, so I had to let him stay."

Remus Lupin (who plays bass) was bitten by a rabid wolf when he was just five years old at a meet-in-greet session with the animals at Honeydukes Park Zoo. To this day, he has a nasty scar covering his whole upper left forearm and has to be examined by doctors every three months for the rest of his life. "The disease that the. . . animal had, it — it reacts ve-ry badly with human blood. If it wasn't for recent developments in modern scientific medicine I would have been six feet under a very long time ago. I used to have to get shots every month. It was. . . unpleasant," Lupin tells me quietly and I soon learn not to bring it up seeing as I risk threatening, deathly looks from everyone in the room, along with an uncomfortable and uncharacteristic silence from Lupin. Despite this, however, he has an astounding wit and is the most sarcastic person I've ever had the fortune to meet. And ladies: with his brown hair and the tall, long frame he isn't so bad on the eyes either.

Lastly, Peter Pettigrew completed the four when the trio were teenagers. The slightly fat but eager drummer, who charmed people with his baby face, but never quite thought himself in the same league, talent-wise, as with his friends. Pettigrew however is a taboo subject with the group — when I bring up his switch to the DeathEaters Rock group when they were nineteen, the room seems to dim, goes _very_ quiet and Potter gets up to make tea. Black hastily mutters something about needing to go to the bathroom and Lupin simply coughs and intently examines the wallpaper. The girls in the room however are almost mutinous, MacDonald looking up sharply and glaring so fiercely I begin to feel my face melting off. Evans shot me a glance of almost pure loathing which then switched to disappointment and I feel like I have let the whole world down because Evans just has that effect on you and McKinnon tells me to (and I quote precisely) "Fuck off and don't mention that wormy asshole near me again. Or I'll chuck you out." And stalks like a blonde panther from the room, returning with Potter, the tea, and a sense of utter unapologetic-ness.

So yes; the scandal of Peter Pettigrew leaving _The Marauders _for the _DeathEaters_ was a scandalous scandal of the biggest kind when it happened two years ago. And it actually found Black and Pettigrew having a fist fight in the parking lot of a local pub, for which Pettigrew tried to press charges of the loss of a fingernail. However, they were The Marauders, known for being signed to Hogwarts Records when they were all just seventeen and unknowing in the fact that they were about to become international sensations just less than four months. So when Pettigrew left, they carried on through and barely lost their momentum, just getting Lupin or Potter to occasionally play the drums when necessary ("Couldn't be arsed to learn myself," adds Black). Their hits have spanned far and wide with "Runnin' round after Dark" and "Wishing on Flying Motorbikes" and utterly _smashing_ records as both were in the top spots for a little over two months each. Now, all at twenty-one, they've had three hit albums and twelve number one singles. There has been much talk of an indictment into the Rock hall of fame.

But of course this six wouldn't be completed without everybody's favourite girls.

-

You might remember the two-some that burst onto the scene at only sixteen years old. Severus Snape and Lily Evans were quite the pair after all. Evans was raised by parents who didn't really know — or care — that much about rock music until their daughter announced proudly at eleven that she had been signed to a development deal at Hogwarts Records due to a secret interview she had done a few weeks earlier. "They were bewildered, but pleased," she tells me.

Snape however, refuses to talk about his home life and only snappily stated in an interview three years ago that, "My father and mother fought a lot. And we didn't have a lot of money. Now stop asking me questions about it." The teenage duo rose to significant prominence with their hit single "You're a Witch" and then shortly released their album 'Meet you by the Swings' when they were both fifteen.

Now, you will all surely remember the Feud.

When asked about the fights between The Marauders and Lily &amp; Snape, everybody has something to say. But the facts are that Snape eventually brutally left Evans right in the middle of their national tour for a solo deal with the record label, The Dark Lord, causing Evans to have to cancel all remaining shows and retreat from public life.

"Snape's a git," Lupin says, scarily calm.

"Snape, that _fucking —,_" Black then goes into a rant about loyalty and with a chill that scrapes down my spine, I remember that his own younger brother Regulus Black had signed to the same label (which also owns the DeathEaters) until he was killed in a car crash days after his first show a handful of years ago.

"He is deluded. Entirely an idiot. That is all," curtly comments MacDonald, whom Evans met and then quickly joined with after Snape left her to form their now famous group _The Mudbloods._ Which since, has had hit singles such as, 'In the War', 'Your Dark Magic' and 'I Am What I Want' from their albums 'Wanted for my Blood' and "I'm on Trial".

McKinnon doesn't say anything. She was manager of Snape &amp; Lily even though she was also only fifteen when they hit it big. I gladly don't push the subject with her. McKinnon could probably scare God without even trying.

"I don't want to talk about Sev — Snape," says Evans evenly, and Black tugs a dark red curl in a rare sign of companionship.

"I don't want to talk about Snape either," snaps Potter, uncharacteristically malicious.

The brawl between The Marauders and Lily &amp; Snape made international headlines when Snape called Potter "a spoilt brat who has only made it this far because of his rich-bitch parents" and Potter immediately retaliated by saying that "Snape needs to wash his hair. I can't possibly understand what he's saying with _that_ much grease dripping into his mouth."

Potter also had a rather public thing for Evans, way back in god-knows-when. Their fights actually became a rock legend when Evans once punched Potter in the middle of the street when he attempted to ask her if she wanted to do a song (or, as the internet gossip sites prefer to say, _snog_) with him. Our dearest Evans, screaming like a banshee for half of London to hear, yelled, "POTTER, YOU ABSOLUTE, COMPLETE, ARROGANT _TOE RAG_, DON'T TALK TO ME!" before she stormed away, leaving a dazed Potter behind with a bloody broken nose.

Potter stubbornly refused to give it up and made it very public of his interest in collaborating with Evans, "I like her voice," he once said in an interview, "Her voice is the best thing I've ever heard — aside from my own, of course." Smirk. (At the time of that interview he was still slightly full of himself, he now admits).

Evans said, bitingly, when she was quoted that very line in a separate interview, "I wouldn't collaborate with Potter if it was a choice between him and Giant Squid." _Smirk._

This then caused a massive uproar of rage from Giant Squid fans and Evans had to issue a public apology to the fifty year old band, who were touring at the time through nursing homes around the country.

Everyone was picking sides and tearing posters and suddenly the Potter versus Evans will-they-collaborate-debate was the Biggest Thing in music. A nineteen year old Evans weighed in on the subject when _The Mudblood's _first album went platinum right in its first month, saying: "It's a wonder Potter can even fit his head in a sound booth, it's so big. I don't want to discuss it. He makes me sick."

So how did we get here, two years after that, making a collaboration album with the person she so loudly claimed "makes me want to poke myself in the eye with the nearest stick"?

"Money," Evans says simply, with a bit of a smile, "Hogwarts (records) thought that the publicity and the sales on the album would be phenomenal, and I was pressured into it, basically. But it's fine now," she rushes to add after a hurt look from Lupin, "really, it's all good. Making the album is going to be an absolute dream."

Speaking of the album, the time limit is crazy. Most musicians have years to create and write their songs before releasing them, but this time? They've got three months. Yup, three months to plan, write and record the album before they're on the shelves for the public. When I asked group's manager Marlene McKinnon why the limit so was small she said, in her husky voice, "Sales are higher in October and we needed to cash in the whole Feud thing before people realise that they don't really hate each other that much anymore."

Right then. Three months, to make an album it is.

***

_Your eyes are roses_ _your heart is gold_ _please don't wake up_ _and leave me alone _ (Written by Lily Evans, on Mary MacDonald's back after she passed out drunk)

/ _D.J.M, official Reporter for the _Rolling Stone

This article will be on going and will be a weekly feature in _Rolling Stone_ unless otherwise stated.


End file.
